Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Toothpaste Shoepolish, or, Own your Shit

So,
I was pretty damn hard on several of you guys last night about your
responses to the #BayBridge action by black.seed along the lines of
"hey, I'm an ally, but I don't have to agree with every action, that
doesn't mean I'm not well intended"

The dialogue went pretty much like it always does: I'm hard on you
because I believe in you, I know you're one of the good guys, you're
just not yet aware of your own priveledge and need some more work on
intersectionality. Here are some resources, I know you'll get it. How do
I know you'll get it?

Because every argument you've ever used
has come out of my mouth too. And I had some folks who love me enough to
thump it into my head when I was being stupid, superior, and
privilege-blind without even realizing it. I've often been known to
mutter "I should just put toothpaste in my shoe polish so at least
they're minty fresh when I shove my foot in my mouth."

And last
night, I fucked up too. As I was having social justice
conversations in half a dozen places, I committed a doozy myself.

I saw it, it resonated powerfully with me, I could relate to it, and
given the lack of data I could find, I made a stupid assumption: that
this was a white individual offering support to a BIPOC protester. I
went on to wax poetic about how perfect an analogy it was for being a
white ally. One some level, I *wanted* him to be white so I could better relate.

Yeah, I was wrong as can be. I was contacted
privately and let know (more politely than I deserved) that both
individuals in the photo are black, and were both active participants in
the protest. I made an assumption about the racial identity of the
masculine-presenting individual based on the color of his skin, and
assumed he had to be 'just' an ally. I am in the wrong, and I apologize.

I was wrong, and I'm owning up to it. I fucked up, there's no other way to put it. I'm pulling the essay I wrote yesterday about the photo series, and I'm correcting the misinformation anywhere I posted it. This is how we do it. Because it's not "if" we're going to fuck up, it's "when".

How we handle it when we DO fuck up is what matters. That's where we're tested, and have to overcome our own defensiveness, desire to blame it on ignorance, and talk up how good of an ally we are the rest of the time. If we get our feelings hurt for being thumped, start tone policing, and talking about "why are we being attacked for our good intentions" and take our ball and go home, we've failed. We have to stand up, brush off, accept what our mistakes were, learn from them, and move on with the intent to not make that mistake again and learn how we can apply it to avoid other pitfalls. That's the mettle of an ally